How to: Find an apartment in San Francisco

I found an apartment in San Francisco, in 5 days.

This is a true story about apartment hunting in the Bay Area. I swear.

After creating a calendar loaded with apartment open houses it was time to prepare. In order to be successful in the apartment hunt, one must print credit reports, bank statements, FICO scores (yeah, don't know what that is? I didn't either), resumes (yes, your resume is very beneficial!), and pay stubs or offer letters (offer letters are normal because let's be real, everyone is a tech person). You then bring all of these goodies in a Google folder (the Google folder helps advertise how great you are because you or someone you are going to live with, Eric cough cough, works there) and then you put on the charm. I basically tried to shmooze with all of the realtor people as best I could. I smiled, I laughed, I told ridiculous stories about how responsible Eric and I are, and we still got rejected from places. It's so silly, having to sell yourself to someone to get an apartment and yet everyone does it.

The bright side is, after just 5 open houses, we snagged a place! It was in the bag! We got the call the next day, THE CALL, just kidding, but seriously we got the apartment. And let me tell you, it's perfect.

We are in walking distance to all of the greatest things, bars, restaurants, movie theaters (like cute old, historical ones, not an AMC people, although I like those too, I'm not a snob), Bi-Rite ice cream (it's no Molly Moons, but you can't have it all), 3 markets within 2 blocks of your apartment: 1 is like a Madison Market, very organic and fancy, 1 has the best beer and wine selection, and the other I have never been to, we are also conveniently located to lots of great coffee shops that I will later use to job hunt, when my apartment gets too small.

Everyone in our building are SO NICE. Not to mention, our building's dog friendly. What? DOG FRIENDLY. That's right people. My dream dog Muppet, to come later once I can convince Eric or surprise him with a puppy...Anyway, there's a dog named George who is a giant black Great Dane as well as a dog named Jasper who lives down the hall from me. Adorable. I'm basically in love with everything about our building and apartment. We are also located just one block from Alamo Square.

What's Alamo Square, you ask? Well it's our neighborhood and a park. What park, you ask? The one where the Full House houses are! Yep, pretty awesome. There's lots of dogs at the park too. I really like dogs.

Our apartment also has San Francisco bay windows and is a walk-up. This is my dream people, a historic San Francisco walk-up. ALSO, there's a bus stop right across the street from my house! So nice, and even nicer is that it is always late and always packed! That was sarcasm in case you didn't catch that.

In other news, I have begun the job hunt. 6 job applications, 4 networking situations, 1 informational interview, and 1 rejection later, that's where I'm at. I will prevail though! I'm extremely motivated by how poor I am (help me, I'm poor might be where I start in an interview) and how excited I am to get to work! Seriously, I'm excited. Is that weird? Whatever, I love social work and you all knew that sheesh.

I just wanted to write a quick update about my status in San Francisco. If things get real juicy in the job world I will post again. I mean I have plenty of time on my hands, obviously. In the meantime, I will finish unpacking my boxes (Eric is putting me to shame with all of his stuff unpacked and put away and I have 3 boxes left). Fun fact: last year I left one box unpacked the entire year. Nailing it.

With flowers in my hair,

Mandi

Ps. The stories are true. Everyone here is a tech person. I have seen more people wearing Google Glass (that is the dumbest invention in the universe in my opinion because you look like a douche wearing them) and more people out to dinner with their laptop than ever before. Not to mention you can overhear people talking at bars about their "domain names" and other nerd topics. You can throw a rock and someone works at Google or some small start-up that you and I both have probably never heard of. This is a whole different ball game down here people.